A review by alegrya
Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier

3.0

Overall a pleasant story, in places somewhat irritating and something bugged me about the weirdly controlling and somewhat manipulative behaviour of the frog. There were some things I didn't entirely anticipate and the way some plot points were revealed felt unnecessarily delayed and didn't build tension. The apparent heroine wasn't really, things sort of happened to her and it wasn't until close to the end when the larger drama had moved towards resolution that she did something. Couldn't get excited about an incestuous relationship even when it was packaged as a grand love story. I enjoyed the descriptions of things such as order of events in a full moon evening and quite a few of the other realm characters had great personalities though weren't seen much. It would have been fun to know more from the housekeeper's POV as I suspect 5 girls may not have really been as sneaky as they think and the knowledge of people who've lived so many years in the castle and grounds is something I'd like to read more on.

The audiobook narration was quite distracting and at times quite irksome. Accents came and went, cutesy voices were used inconsistently between the sisters depending on who was in various scenes. Pronunciation of the family castle name for example was said in at least 3 different ways.